News

British imams willing to marry girls of 14 in secret

CLERICS from four of Britain’s mosques are under investigation after being
caught on camera agreeing to conduct secret marriage ceremonies involving
girls as young as 14.

They include a senior Muslim leader who has advised police on community
cohesion and publicly denounced forced marriage and an imam based at the
country’s second largest mosque in Birmingham.

Campaigners believe that thousands of British girls, mostly of south Asian
origin, are coerced into marriage each year with many sent abroad for the
ceremonies.

Undercover reporters from ITV’s Exposure programme have discovered, however,
that imams in the UK were also willing to marry underage girls.

Posing as the mother and brother of a 14-year-old girl who they wished to
marry to an older man, two reporters approached 56 mosques. Eighteen said
they would be willing to perform an Islamic marriage, called a nikah.